Gabi Ingersoll was the only person on the top level of the Pickering Square parking garage who didn’t know what was about to happen.
In her mind, she and her boyfriend, Jordan Guy, were meeting a photographer for a photo shoot on July 27 that she won in a giveaway at one of her favorite places for photos: a parking garage.
But once Ingersoll, 31, and Guy, 37, got to the garage and went through a few poses as the sun set on the Bangor skyline, she turned around to see Guy on one knee.
The Pickering Square parking garage may not be at the top of everybody’s list of most romantic Bangor locations. It’s utilitarian, dusty and above a park Ingersoll previously said was an “eyesore,” but that “looks really good now.” But Ingersoll said she wouldn’t change anything about the proposal.
“It was literally perfect. I mean, it’s funny because he had asked me in the past, like ‘what would you want and blah blah.’ And I said, ‘I don’t really have a specific place in mind. I just really imagine it being you and me,’” Ingersoll, a bartender at Rasa Indian Cuisine in Bangor, said.
Guy wasn’t the only one who knew he was proposing. He reached out to the photographer, Casey London, to ask if it was OK if he proposed during the photo shoot. London said yes and worked with Guy to create a signal for when he was proposing.
“I had Gabi face away from Jordan, and told her that he was going to run up and grab her from behind. Once I knew she wasn’t looking at him, I told Jordan to run up and ‘bear hug’ her — ‘bear hug’ was the code word,” London said.
After Ingersoll said yes, the shoot became less “nerve wracking” and turned into engagement pictures, London said.
The engagement photos would soon be sent up to Ingersoll and Guy’s families in Aroostook County.
Although they both grew up in The County, Guy and Ingersoll’s age difference meant they didn’t really interact with each other growing up but knew some of the same people, Ingersoll said.
That changed when Ingersoll downloaded Hinge, a dating app, in 2024. She was living in Caribou at the time but knew she didn’t want to stay there long term, so she set her location to Bangor. That’s when she matched with Guy, the owner of Brick City Barber Co. in Brewer, and started driving to Bangor for their dates.
She moved to the city in January 2025 and fell in love with Guy, she said. Falling in love in the Queen City made the view from the top of the parking garage more of a trip down memory lane than sightseeing.
“After he proposed, I was like, OK this is cool because you know we essentially fell in love in Bangor and the view was kind of symbolic,” Ingersoll said.
The couple are now planning to elope overseas, possibly in Ireland or New Zealand, before throwing a party when they get back to Maine, Ingersoll said.
“We’ve traveled before, so we’re just like, let’s just go on a really sick vacation and have it be like an elopement honeymoon, and then come back and have a party,” she said.